by James Wilde
Branches tore at his hair and lashed his face. Lying low across his horse’s neck, he rode as fast as he could along the narrow track. The sun was slipping towards the horizon, the shadows lengthening among the trees and the air growing sharper. Night was coming too fast. He pushed his steed on.
As he weighed the best way to approach Edwin without risking the edge of the earl’s blade, he heard shouts and cries and the clash of iron upon iron from ahead. He pulled up his horse and cocked his head, listening. Could Morcar have turned his men around and now be fighting his brother for his honour?
He jumped off his horse and tied it to a tree. It would not be good to be caught up in the battle. As he crept forward to get a better look, he heard the thunder of hooves rushing towards him from the battle ahead. With his back pressed against a broad oak, he hid as the riders raced by. ‘To Morcar,’ one of them called.
Hengist frowned, puzzled. Who then fought Edwin? He loped through the trees until the storm of fighting seemed to rage all around him. Peering from behind a lightning-blasted ash tree, he saw bodies littering the forest floor. Everywhere was confusion. Riderless horses bolted. Warriors ran, for their lives, or to defend Edwin. Swords flashed in shafts of sunlight. Shields cracked and spears stabbed. And then he glimpsed the familiar hauberks and helms of the Normans. The king’s men were carving their way through the wandering army.
Edwin had been betrayed by his own men, that could be the only answer. Morcar had been right. The Normans would not have been able to find the army by chance. Hengist cursed under his breath. There was nothing he could do here now. He had to hope that he could find Morcar’s trail to the north-east.
But as he turned to creep back towards his horse, he heard the pounding of feet draw near. He crouched behind a dense tangle of bramble heavy with berry. Three men came running by, casting desperate glances over their shoulders. One of them, he saw, was Edwin.
As the men scrambled over snaking roots, Hengist heard the whistle of an arrow. The shaft slammed into the fleeing Edwin’s chest and he fell to one side, dead.
In shock, Hengist threw himself back against the ash tree. The arrow had not come from the direction of the battle.
For a while, nothing moved. Then, after several taut breaths, a shape separated from the pooling shadows. He squinted, troubled by the silhouette he saw. As the figure slipped away through a patch of late sunlight, Hengist glimpsed a sight that left him sick to his stomach. The man who had killed Edwin and perhaps had ended the last hope of the English was Hereward’s own brother, Redwald.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
THE CANDLE GUTTERED on the shelf. Shadows swirled across the hut as the woman raised her head from her straw mattress and looked around. ‘Who is there?’ Turfrida asked, her eyelids heavy. She squinted, trying to pierce the dark around the door. Only a few hot coals glowed in the hearth, enough to take the autumnal chill out of the air. She had been dozing fitfully. Sleep came rarely since she had left Hereward behind for Crowland. Too many dreams plagued her, and her child seemed just as troubled, waking and crying far too often during the dark hours. Did it sense something amiss, she wondered, glancing towards the heap of swaddling clothes in the sleeping-basket? For children were wise. They still heard the whispers of the vættir and saw things no grown man or woman saw.
Turfrida pressed herself up on her elbows, her eyes clearing. She shuddered. A shape darker than the shadows around her was watching her from the door. ‘Night-walker or man, step forward and reveal yourself,’ she hissed, her hand flying to the talisman on the leather thong around her neck.
After a moment’s hesitation, Redwald stepped forward into the wavering light. Turfrida felt a chill. His face was impassive, but she saw a gulf between the apple-cheeked, innocent features and the cold, dead stare that had always disturbed her. How Hereward never recognized what lay in those eyes had always amazed her. Or perhaps Redwald only revealed it to women.
He began, ‘Hereward sent me—’
‘Save your lies. I can see into your heart.’ He flinched at that.
‘More witchery?’ He crossed the room and warmed his hands at the hearth. ‘It is cold out tonight.’
Turfrida climbed from her bed and pulled on a cloak. Goose-flesh prickled the skin of her forearms, and not from the cold. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded.
‘You never liked me,’ he said, rubbing his hands together.
‘And you never liked it that I had Hereward’s ear,’ she snapped, tugging the cloak tighter around her.
‘How high he could have risen if only I had guided him. How low he now will fall.’
‘There must be some gain here for you,’ she said coldly, ignoring the unsettling tone she heard in his words.
‘Gain?’ he repeated, pursing his lips. ‘It is too late now for gain.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘Hereward told me, in the end. He trusts me.’
She screwed up her nose. ‘I have never known a man so sly, spinning half-lies and setting friend against friend with only a few words, all to your own end. You weave your web and wait to see what flies fall into it.’
He shrugged. ‘Yet you said nothing.’
‘You are Hereward’s brother. He loves you. It was not for me to hurt him with sharp words.’ She paused. ‘He will find out soon enough, I always knew that.’
He eyed the baby’s basket and sighed. ‘Once I thought there was hope that Hereward could lead the English to victory, and that we could return to the world we all knew. I was taken in by a king’s thegn. I lived among riches. I never went hungry. And I rose to stand beside the highest in the land.’ His voice cracked with passion. She watched him clench his fist, his hand shaking. But then the fire seemed to drain out of him and he hung his head, reflecting, she thought, on what might have been. ‘But you, and that monk, have led my brother in circles and now that chance of victory has passed,’ he continued, his voice low. ‘The strength of the Normans grows by the day, and we grow weaker. When they attack, it will be as if a storm of spears falls upon us. We could still throw ourselves upon the king’s mercy, keep our heads upon our shoulders and live to claw some kind of joy out of this miserable life. But, no, Hereward will never have that. He would rather we fight until the last. And die. For what? The English are already turning to the new king. We will be forgotten before the flesh has even rotted from our bones, and all will have been for naught.’
Turfrida snorted with contemptuous laughter. ‘Only one thing will stop my husband winning this war. Weak men, like you. Men who whine like frightened children and run crying at the first sign of hardship,’ she spat. ‘This war will be lost by men who betray the strong and good-hearted for their own gain. If the English stand together as battle-brothers, William the Bastard’s days are done.’
When he looked at her, she thought she saw sadness in his eyes. At that moment he seemed little more than a lost boy. ‘It is too late for that,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘We must do what we can to save ourselves.’
‘I know why you have come here,’ she said gently, stepping closer to the hearth. ‘You have failed to turn my husband away from his plans for war, and so you would have me persuade him. I cannot, Redwald.’
He laughed quietly to himself. ‘I know you would never do that. You and Hereward are too much alike. No, my only hope is to throw in my lot with the Normans. King William needs clever Englishmen, I hear, and I will rise to the top once more. That is my destiny. That has always been my destiny.’
Turfrida eyed him, scarcely able to believe what she had heard. Had their struggles driven him mad, like poor Hengist? But then she realized what lay behind those words and she felt a chill. She glanced towards the door and regretted it immediately. In a casual manner, Redwald stepped back a few paces so he was between her and her path to escape. ‘You think to make of me an offering to the Normans,’ she said, her face hardening.
He shook his head. ‘How little you know me.’ Before she could reply, he lunged.
Shock gripped her at his speed. But then she felt a sharp pain in her belly and when she looked down a dark stain was spreading across her white linen sleeping-dress. Redwald slowly drew his arm back and she glimpsed the short-bladed knife, sticky with blood. Staggering, she clutched at her stomach and felt the hot essence bubble up between her fingers.
‘What have you done?’ she gasped.
‘What I should have done long ago.’
He pushed past her and she fell upon the bed, her head spinning. When she glanced back, she saw him looming over the child’s sleeping-basket. His expression remained emotionless as he stabbed the blade down into the tight bundle of swaddling clothes, then again, and again.
Turfrida smiled despite her pain.
His face flushed as he realized the truth. Snatching back the heap of cloth, he saw the sleeping place was empty. In sudden rage he hurled the basket across the hut. Turfrida closed her eyes, relief washing through her. The child would be safe with the wise woman who had taken him for the night to ease her burden. The son would still be reunited with the father.
‘You will not escape justice for what you have done,’ she wheezed. ‘My husband will hunt you down and slaughter you, brother or not.’
Redwald wiped the blade on the hem of her sleeping-dress. ‘There will be no hiding any more. A monk saw me when I slipped through the gate. I would not make an enemy of Hereward, but he must cut his way through an army of Normans if he wishes to reach me.’
The candlelight seemed to glow brighter and for a moment she was sure Hereward was standing there, watching her. Regret flooded her. Never again would she see her husband or her son. She felt a deep sadness, for them, not her, for they would have to live out their days in the shadow of this loss. ‘Why have you killed me?’ Her words seemed to come from another.
‘So the Normans will know I am true.’ He turned her on to her back and leaned over her so that his face filled her whole vision. She saw no more emotion there than in a butcher who had killed a pig. Those eyes. Black and dead.
‘How will they know you have truly done this thing?’ she gasped.
He smiled.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
FOG SHROUDED THE field of the dead beside the abbey. Under its grey cover, four grieving men hunched in silence around a yawning grave. Heads bowed, the cloaked and huddled mourners listened to the solemn intonation of Crowland’s abbot drifting out across the grassy mounds of ancient burials. No bird called. No breeze moaned through the sombre yews. So still was it, they could have been alone in all the world. Deep in the dark hole, bound tightly in a white linen shroud, Turfrida was being laid to rest.
Alric screwed up his eyes. How that pathetic bundle tormented him so. The account of what the monks had found in her hut the night of her death tramped through his mind until he felt he would never be rid of it. Yet when he looked up, he encountered another sight worse by far. Hereward’s face appeared to be graven in stone. His mouth was a black slash, his eyes hollow and haunted. All night and day, Alric had prayed for his friend, afraid of what this terrible crime would do to him. But Hereward’s grief had been sealed deep inside him, and though Alric had tried to find words of comfort, none of them would reach the foot of that black chasm.
As the abbot’s final Latin words rolled out into the deadening fog, Hereward unclasped the hands that had been held tightly in front of him. On his palm, he showed a polished blue stone on a leather thong. He dropped it into the grave, saying in a low, strained voice, ‘Take this with you when you run with the vættir, so you will be safe. My wife …’ Alric thought his friend seemed on the brink of saying more, but he simply nodded and walked away without a backward glance.
Leaving Kraki and Guthrinc at the graveside, Alric hurried after him. Now more than at any time Hereward should not be left alone. He knew well how grief ate away a man’s heart.
Before he could reach his friend, a monk stepped from the direction of the abbey. A small bundle nestled in his arms. ‘Your son,’ the monk said, proffering the child.
Hereward peered into the depths of the cloth for a long moment and then said, ‘I do not want him.’ When the monk began to stutter questions as if the Mercian had not understood his intentions, Hereward’s face darkened and he growled, ‘Keep him here. Raise him, teach him, make him a good Christian man, one of your own. But do not tell him who his father is.’
He spun on his heel and strode away into the fog, leaving the dismayed monk behind. Alric ran to catch up. ‘Why,’ he asked breathlessly when he arrived at his friend’s side, ‘would you not take your son back to Ely?’
‘Children are weak,’ Hereward growled. ‘They bleat and they moan and they are a burden to all. I have no time to raise him. I have men to kill and a war to fight.’ He seemed done, but then added, ‘He needs a better father. The monks here will serve well.’
Alric began to protest until the Mercian silenced him with a murderous glare. The matter was closed. Past graves glistening with dew the monk walked in silence at his friend’s side. As they neared the stone bulk of the church, he snatched a glance and saw Hereward staring deep into the fog. ‘What are you thinking?’ he ventured.
‘Autumn mist,’ the Mercian muttered, his thoughts far away from that place. ‘And the rising sun.’
Alric smiled, pretending to understand, but his thoughts worried at him. One thing they had not yet discussed, one thing that cast such a terrible shadow he had been afraid to raise it. No longer could it be ignored. He took a deep breath and began, ‘Redwald—’
‘Redwald could not have done this thing,’ Hereward interrupted in a flat tone.
‘The monk who saw him enter—’
‘The monk was mistaken,’ Hereward insisted, his anger crackling. ‘I know my brother. He is a better man than me, a bearer of a good heart. This crime …’ The words choked in his throat. ‘Only a devil could do such a thing.’
‘You do not know him,’ Alric snapped. For too long he had kept Redwald’s confession sealed inside, and all the fears and doubts that sprang from it like briars had threatened to throttle him. No more. ‘I have heard his confession, when he believed he was dying, in Ely. This murder is not beyond him.’
Hereward whirled, his eyes blazing. ‘You lie,’ he snarled, raising his fist.
Alric stood his ground. ‘You would accuse me of that, after all we have been through together?’
The hand hung in the air for a moment before it slowly fell. The monk saw it was shaking. ‘Tell me,’ Hereward whispered.
‘His confession lies with God. I cannot betray the trust your brother placed in me.’ He swallowed, choosing a careful path between helping his friend and damnation. ‘But know that your brother is not the man he showed to the world. Devil, yes, I would call him that.’
Hereward waved a dismissive hand. ‘You accuse him, yet you can tell me nothing of these crimes? No, I will not have it.’
Alric pushed his face forwards, forcing the warrior to look into his eyes. ‘Then you must choose who you trust more, your brother or me.’
‘How can you ask such a thing?’ Hereward hissed.
‘Because you are my friend,’ the monk all but shouted, ‘and you deserve to know the truth, though you hate me for ever more.’ When Hereward flinched, he forced himself to calm. ‘Seeing me every day, knowing that I held his darkest secrets, that must have made him afraid. Of all in Ely, only I knew who he truly was. He would have killed me if he could, I am sure of it, but at that time he was afraid of being found out. When the Northmen made to sail away, he seized his moment. He thought the waves or the Danes would do his bloody work for him and I would never be seen again.’
Hereward searched the depths of his friend’s eyes and then let out a howl of such pain that the crows took flight from the trees around the abbey. The beating wings sounded like distant thunder through the fog. The warrior swept away into that grey cloud and for long moments after Alric could hear his roars, like a wounded beast roaming around the abbey.
He sensed someone standing near by. Hengist waited in the mist, his head half-bowed as if he carried a great weight upon his shoulders. ‘Edwin is dead,’ Hereward said. ‘Morcar and his army are missing. We must find them before the Normans reach them or all is lost.’
Alric nodded, relieved that his friend had been distracted by this new purpose. ‘And then?’
Hereward looked down at the grave. ‘And then I will find my brother and carve out his beating heart.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
THE SUN WAS setting in a crimson blaze. On the steep slopes of the hill below, the darkening rooftops of Lincylene were limned with fire. Redwald slid down from his horse in the lengthening shadows and strode across the mud of the bailey. The sack banged against his thigh with each step. The grounds were still and his jaunty humming carried out through the chill air to the door of the castle.
As he neared, he heard his name called brightly. A woman ran out from the deep shade around the keep. Edoma grinned, her fair hair flying. She never slowed and crashed straight into his embrace, her arms thrown around his neck. Her soft mouth clamped on his and his thoughts flew back to hot nights of passion, sweat-slick bodies, and slaps and punches and bites that she had taken eagerly and demanded more, and harder. Whatever he wanted, she had let him do to her, and in that exchange they had sealed their relationship. He would never call it love, but it filled one part of the vast, empty space inside him.